Animal food symbolising violence

I often work in other people’s homes and put my lunch in their fridge, but I usually have a squiz inside, just to see if I’ve stumbled on a vegan household. No such luck! I’m always disappointed. There they are, the same old products, bits of dead animal flesh in neat little trays or the cheese or the politically correct free range eggs, or worse. And my clients are usually lovely people and I shudder to think how far they are from being at the forefront of social change.
The move away from animal food is where any transformation of the species has to start because it symbolises the most routine and widely practised violence that we humans practise. Our attitude to where our food comes from is at the heart of a much bigger attitude change. Animal foods symbolise the violent side of human nature. That symbol is familiar to all vegans, and it makes a vegan’s life very different to other people’s. We buy different things to most others to symbolise our non-violence. Our kitchens smell differently and our fridges are full of violence-free products. Vegans boycott a huge chunk of the consumer market which is violence-based, and just by doing that they begin the transformation. And that is why veganism is where non-violence starts and vice versa.